“These things are a mystery,” said Isabel, gently; “and perhaps it is better that it should have happened now than later on when we were married. But tell me about him, dear. Has he settled down to seeing his patients again? You wrote to me saying that he was neglecting everything.”
“So he is, nearly everything, now. Bel dear, I will not be so hard upon him any more. You must be right, that he cannot help himself, or he would never have behaved so ill. He must be mad.”
Isabel clung to her with a startled look in her eyes.
“It is the only way in which I can account for the change,” continued Laura, “for I will not believe what Aunt Grace says, that all men are bad at heart. If they are, women must be as wicked too.”
Isabel shivered slightly.
“Tell me about what he does now.”
“I can’t, dear,” cried Laura, piteously. “I seem to know so little. Only that he goes out soon after breakfast, and does not come back till dinner-time, and so wet sometimes that he must have been walking about the streets for hours.”
Isabel sighed.
“I’ve tried—oh, how I’ve tried!—to win his confidence; but he says nothing, only turns away, and goes out. It is just as if he had lost something of which he is always in search, and every day he grows more moody and strange.”
“Then he is ill—mentally ill,” cried Isabel, excitedly. “I knew that there must be some excuse for his strange behaviour. Laura dear, my heart has misgiven me from the first. It is all so directly opposed to his nature and character. I will not believe that he could be so false to everything that he has said to me.”